|This fascinating catalog of the comic relates the ironic and ludicrous adventures of a noted (but mysterious) English travel-book writer whose reported “death” throws the London literary world into a tizzy.

Anthony Powell is also the author of O, How the Wheel Becomes It! and Venusberg.

Author Bio

Anthony Powell

Born into an upper-class family--his father was an army officer--Powell attended Eton and Oxford. He worked in publishing and as a journalist and, in 1931, his first novel was published. In 1934 he married Lady Violet Pakenham, a wealthy daughter of the fifth Earl of Longford, and had two sons. After a short stint in Hollywood looking for screenwriting work, Powell returned to London, reviewed books for a living, and continued to write novels. He published nothing between WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING in 1939 and A BUYER'S MARKET in 1952. The war intervened (Powell was an officer), and he also wrote a biography of John Aubrey. His monumental work, A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, was inspired by Poussin's painting of that name, which he saw in London in the Wallace Collection and which suggested the effects of time on human beings as well as what he called "the inexorable law of coincidence." Powell also wrote several other novels and four volumes of memoirs. Offered a knighthood in 1973, he declined (thinking a knight "rather an awful thing to be") and died at the age of 94.